The Frogs Who Wanted a King

• 2 minute read
• Ages 7-11
• Aesop's Fables

The frogs lived in a wide green pond and nobody ruled them.

They swam where they liked and ate what they found and sat on whichever lily pad they wanted. It was, by most measures, an excellent life.

But they had begun to feel that it was not quite proper. Other creatures had kings. The bees had a queen. The birds had eagles above them. The frogs had nothing at all, and it started to seem like something was missing.

The first king

So they made a great noise about it, all together, until at last a voice answered from the sky and said, very well, they would have a king.

And something came down out of the air and hit the middle of the pond with an enormous splash.

The frogs went under the banks and stayed there for a long time.

When they finally came up, the new king was floating in the middle of the water and had not moved at all.

It was a log.

They watched it for a whole day. It drifted a little. It did nothing else.

By the second day the boldest of them swam out and touched it. By the third day they were sitting on it. By the end of the week they were using their king as a diving board and complaining loudly that he was no king at all, and demanding a proper one, a real one, one that would actually do something.

The second king

The voice from the sky answered again. It sounded tired.

And this time what came down to the pond was a stork.

The stork was a real king. He was tall and quick and impressive and he did a great deal, all day, every day, standing in the shallows on his long red legs.

By the end of the month there were not many frogs left in that pond, and the ones who were left stayed under the bank and did not come out much, and nobody said anything at all about the log.